158 Part 2 The Cultural Environment of Global Markets may be hired to file an appeal for a variance in a building code on the basis that the attorney will do a more efficient and thorough job than someone unfamiliar with such procedures. While this practice is often a legal and useful procedure, if a part of that agent’s fee is used to pay bribes, the intermediary’s fees are being used unlawfully. Under U.S. law, an official who knows of an agent’s intention to bribe may risk prosecution and jail time. The FCPA prohibits U.S. businesses from paying bribes openly or using intermediaries as conduits for a bribe when the U.S. manager knows that part of the intermediary’s payment will be used as a bribe. Attorneys, agents, distributors, and so forth may function simply as conduits for illegal payments. The process is further complicated by legal codes that vary from country to country; what is illegal in one country may be winked at in another and be legal in a third. The answer to the question of bribery is not an unqualified one. It is easy to generalize about the ethics of political payoffs and other types of payments; it is much more difficult to make the decision to withhold payment of money when the consequences of not mak-ing the payment may affect the company’s ability to do business profitably or at all. With the variety of ethical standards and levels of morality that exist in different cultures, the dilemma of ethics and pragmatism that faces international business cannot be resolved until the anticorruption accords among the OECD, UN, and OAS members are fully imple-mented and multinational businesses refuse to pay extortion or offer bribes. The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which prohibits American executives and firms from bribing officials of foreign governments, has had a positive effect. According to the latest Department of Commerce figures, since 1994, American businesses have bowed out of 294 major overseas commercial contracts valued at $145 billion rather than paying bribes. This information corroborates the academic evidences cited previously. Even though there are numerous reports indicating a definite reduction in U.S. firms paying bribes, the lure of contracts is too strong for some companies. Lockheed Corporation made $22 million in questionable foreign payments during the 1970s. More recently the company pled guilty to paying $1.8 million in bribes to a member of the Egyptian national parliament in exchange for lobbying for three air cargo planes worth $79 million to be sold to the military. Lock-heed was caught and fined $25 million, and cargo plane exports by the company were banned for three years. Lockheed’s actions during the 1970s were a major influence on the passing of the FCPA. The company now maintains one of the most comprehensive ethics and legal training programs of any major corporation in the United States. It would be naive to assume that laws and the resulting penalties alone will put an end to corruption. Change will come only from more ethically and socially responsible decisions by both buyers and sellers and by governments willing to take a stand. Behaving in an ethically and socially responsible way should be the hallmark of every busi-nessperson’s behavior, domestic or international. Most of us know innately the socially responsible or ethically correct response to questions about knowingly breaking the law, harming the environment, denying someone his or her rights, taking unfair advantage, or behaving in a manner that would bring bodily harm or damage. Meanwhile, the complex rela-tionships among politics, corruption, and corporate social responsibility are only now begin-ning to receive attention on the part of scholars and practitioners.77 Unfortunately, the difficult issues are not the obvious and simple right-or-wrong ones, and differences in cultural values influence the judgment of managers.78 In many countries, the international marketer faces the Ethical and Socially Responsible Decisions 77Peter Rodriguez, Donald S. Siegel, Amy Hillman, and Lorraine Eden, “Three Lenses on the Multinational Enterprise: Politics, Corruption, and Corporate Social Responsibility,” Journal of International Business Studies 37 (2006), pp. 733 – 46. 78David A. Waldman, Mary Sully de Luque, Nathan Washburn, Robert J. House, Bolanle Adetoun, Angel Barrasa, Mariya Bobina, Muzaffer Bodur, Yi-jung Chen, Sukhendu Debbarma, Peter Dorfman, Rosemary R. Dzuvichu, Idil Evcimen, Pingping Fu, Mikhail Grachev, Roberto Gonzalez Duarte, Vipin Gupta, Deanne N. Den Hartog, Annebel H.B. de Hoogh, Jon Howell, Kuen-yung Jone, Hayat Kabasakal, Edvard Konrad, P. L. Koopman, Rainhart Lang, Cheng-chen Lin, Jun Liu, Boris Martinez, Almarie E. Munley, Nancy Papalexandris, T. K. Peng, Leonel Prieto, Narda Quigley, James Rajasekar, Francisco Gil Rodriguez, Johannes Steyrer, Betania Tanure, Henk Theirry, V. M. Thomas, Peter T. van den Berg, and Celeste P. M. Wilderom, “Cultural Leadership Predictors of Corporate Social Responsibility Values of Top Management: A GLOBE Study of 15 Countries,” Journal of International Business Studies 37 (2006), pp. 823 –37.
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